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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Weird Wednesday: I'll take mine fried and furry

[Chef Dad note: Welcome to Weird Wednesday.I spend a lot of time cooking food, thinking
about food and reading about food.Weird
Wednesday celebrates curious intersections between food and human nature,
whether the human in question is me, someone else or society at large.]

A couple months back, I waged jihad on rats that were
building a restaurant in my compost heap.I counted six of the little vermin climbing out of the bin one evening
and wondered if there was a Groupon offer featuring my address.The real problem after this discovery was
that I could no longer get anyone else in the family to take out the compost
scraps.So Chef Dad had to do battle
alone, armed only with the flashlight app on my phone and the abiding knowledge
that I’d gotten lazy about turning the compost pile.

I bought traps with steel jaws and spread them around
the compost bin.

These were major works
of industrial art, with serrated teeth designed to snap the little buggers’
necks in the nicest possible fashion.That is to say swiftly and with as little suffering as possible.

Really, I was trying to be kind to the annoying little
beasts.

The next morning, one of the traps was gone.I found it a couple days later in a spot
that’s fenced off with chicken wire.It
could only have gotten there from being dropped in some fashion from
above.No rat remains in its pristine
jaws.

It was a mystery.How
did this happen?How did the trap get
hoisted from the ground and dropped into a fenced-in spot?

So, I applied the keen eyes of a trained observer and the
discerning thought process a man uniquely brings to such a situation.Only one logical conclusion presented itself.

“Commando rats,” I told the wife (also known as BMW in this
blog, see this post).“Stealth
helicopters.Grappling hooks.Little night-vision goggles.”

Artist Laura Ginn gave up being a vegetarian to explore rats
as an artistic medium and that artistry ranged from dress-making (see Dave
Barry disclaimer above) to haute cuisine.The writer of this story managed to avoid the obvious line – “tastes
like chicken” – but does report that, once skinned, rats resemble rabbits.

Scroll down the second page of the article for a recipe for braised rat.

Insert your own ratatouille joke here.

And if you’re reading Ms. Ginn, install a good security
system, add some Kevlar to that dress and don’t underestimate your enemy.

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About Me

My mother believed that anything worth eating was also worth frying. Mom's vegetable repertoire was limited. I was about 30, shopping with my California-raised bride, when I discovered that spinach was not naturally a bunch of green yuck that oozed out of a can.
Food and cooking is my hobby, my passion and a scholarly interest. It is also at the center of our family life.
Of course, Dad's cooking presents some unique hazards that are just built into the male DNA. It is said that men will only do things that are either dirty or dangerous and that pretty much describes the kitchen when I am in my frenzy. Early in our marriage, my wife would enter the kitchen and say some things that, well, can't be shared in a family-oriented blog, but you can easily find those words in other corners of the Internet. Over time, though, she discovered that there was a direct correlation between the level of utter destruction and the quality of the meal. These days, she comes into the kitchen, surveys the debris and says, "Oh, this is going to be good."